As the old saying goes, there’s really no accounting for people’s tastes, and a quick glance at the various movies that have been dominating Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched list over the last couple of weeks just goes to show it.
In the midst of worldwide Black Lives Matters protests, we’ve seen folks up in arms that The Help had reached the top spot, while The Last Days of American Crime also made it to number one despite quickly earning a reputation as one of the worst movies of the year. And, of course, the latest title to dominate both the viewership and the headlines is the so-called ‘Polish Fifty Shades of Grey‘.
365 Dni has been generating a whole lot of publicity ever since being made available on the streaming platform, with an equal amount of criticism and praise being lavished on the steamy nature of the erotic drama. Some people are even convinced that the sex scenes are real, which is a compliment to the actors more than anything, and in a recent interview, cinematographer Blanka Lipińska admitted that he was often walking a fine line between creating art and filming smut.
“We didn’t want to create porn, but at the same time, we wanted to do justice to the book, that is pretty full of very intimate and passionate sex descriptions. I knew that as a DP I was walking on very thin ice. It is always a big challenge when you have to bring to life a story that people know and have their idea about. Here the challenge was doubled, how to make it seductive and erotic within the borders of general good taste and my aesthetic.”
“We wanted the camera to be as much invisible as possible, to let them act, so indeed the takes were very, very long,” Cierlica explained. “We created the most intimate atmosphere we could for the actors. We reduced the on-set crew to an absolute minimum. As it was handheld I was following their action, and trying to show their passion in a natural but beautiful way. We wanted this sex to be pretty authentic. We wanted the viewer to hear their whispers, heavy breaths and we wanted to show the sweat, passion. Be natural, authentic, but not to cross the border of pornography.”
Whether he succeeded or not is entirely down to personal preference, but one of the many obvious similarities between 365 Dni and the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise is the general sense of apathy towards it from critics, with the former currently holding a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, along with a 3.7 rating on IMDb. The movie may have turned into one of Netflix’s biggest surprise hits in a while given the buzz surrounding it, but those of a less-titillated disposition haven’t been as easily swayed.